Re: 4th set of permission bits?

[Robert Marlow]

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Hmm... I keep reading over and over and I don't see how my idea doesn't
work... maybe an example and you can show me where it is flawed.

say a file begins with the permissions following:

rwxr-xr-xr-x

ie, the last 3 bits for the non logged-in user is defaulted to
the same as that of worlds (the 2nd set of 3 bits).

Then a user, who doesn't care about setting the non logged-in user's
permissions any differently to worlds simply executes chmod as if
the non logged-in user wasn't an issue:

chmod 700

The outcome would be the following because the non logged-in user
defaults to the same permissions as world's by design

rwx---------

Otherwise, if a user wanted the non logged-in user to have different
permissions they could specify them. Something like this (though
it would have to be modified to avoid confusion with things like
sticky bits) could be used

chmod 7550

giving permissions of

rwxr-xr-x---

So basically what I'm getting at is there's no need for the extra
bit that I can see - the last 3 set of permissions is ALWAYS used
by the non logged-in user. But if specifying permissions for that
user isn't necessary, they just default to being the same as that
of world's. This way the permissions for the non logged-in user
is always independant of that of world's. The decision just lies
in whether or not to specify permissions for that user separately
or not. If there is something I'm still missing, please show
me the counterexample of why what I'm thinking wouldn't work.

On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:

> Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 12:13:16 +0100
> From: Marcus Brinkmann <Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
> To: Robert Marlow <rmarlow@tartarus.uwa.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: 4th set of permission bits?
> 
> On Thu, Nov 30, 2000 at 01:55:20PM +0800, Robert Marlow wrote:
> > Perhaps I am incorrect in my interpretation of what you mean by the extra
> > permission bit. What I'm gathering from what you are saying is that the
> > extra bit is required to determine whether that last set of permissions
> > is used at all or the world group is used by default.
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > But surely if the
> > default is simply to have the non logged-in user's permissions default
> > to that of world's the necessity of this extra bit is avoided making 
> > the permissions somewhat less confusing imo. Am I missing something?
> 
> You have not understood what I said yet. Think a bit more about it, read my
> mail again. There is NO way to know if the default world set should be used
> or the extra set of bits, without an extra bit. It's not possible,
> mathematically, logically, and how God designed our world.
> 
> Marcus
> 
> -- 
> `Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org brinkmd@debian.org
> Marcus Brinkmann              GNU    http://www.gnu.org    marcus@gnu.org
> Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
> http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de
> 

- --
from

da Bobstopper
(Public Key available at http://www.student.uwa.edu.au/~rmarlow/bobstopper.gpg)


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